connection unstable

connection unstable

I am trying the Live CD of the midi edition of Sabayon.
This is the first linux distro (I tried 6 more) that gets me connected to the internet just out of the box, but I still have some problem.

I have a D-Link cardbus wifi adapter with an AR5212 Atheros Chipset, and I connect to a WEP-encrypted wifi network, i.e. to a DSL router.
I am not pirating anything, I do am allowed to use this network, but I just don't have administrator access to the router, and even if I had, I cannot change channels or configuration or remove encryption or reboot the router, as there are other people connecting to it.

I connect daily to this same wifi router with this same laptop with this same card under Windows XP, and I can happily surf the internet without any issue. The signal to noise is poor, but it is good enough to get a stable and fast internet connection: I can listen to internet radios, talk with skype, and download 5 new linux distros a day
All this under windows. It sometimes does lose connection and automatically reconnect, but it doesn't happen so often, say a couple of times a day.

Now, with the Live CD of Sabayon Linux, I can connect seamlessly to this network (by selecting it and entering the WEP key), and even surf the web. But, after a few minutes that I'm connected, the connection just stops working.
However, the network manager does not give any warning, and it still says "Device active: yes, Network active: Yes" if I move the cursor over the tray icon.
But I cannot access any web site any more.
If I manually reconnect (right click on the network manager tray icon, click on the network I am already connected to), I can surf the internet again for a few more minutes.

I tried the following: I connect, then I open a terminal and do a "ping 192.168.1.1", which is the router.
I receive all the responses from the router for a few minutes, then I start getting "destination unreachable" or "network unreachable", can't remember which one sorry.

It doesn't seem lile a problem with the wifi card drivers, does it? It seems to me something at a higher level.

Is there anything I can do?
Is there any information I can gather by running some command so that I can post the results?

No matter how poor the signal is, if Windows can build a stable link on it, then Linux should as well.
Also, if the link goes down, then why doesn't the network manager detect it instead of claiming it's active? If it detected the disconnection, I guess it could be configured to automatically reconnect. However, note that under Windows, I do know when it reconnects and it is not so often.

At the end, something absolutely astonishing happened. Since I was able to stay connected for a few minutes, and I always could reconnect when I saw the connection was lost, I was searching this forum for some solution, and I even posted a message to another forum while connected from Sabayon linux. I was writing this very message when I moved the mouse cursor over the netmanager tray icon, just to see the exact message that used to say "device active: yes. Network active: yes". Surprise: the network manager icon had changed from the typical wireless icon (showing a fake signal strength) to the disconnected-wire icon. If I right-clicked, the list of available wireless network didn't appear any more, and if I opened "configure", it sais "no device".
Just as if my wifi card had disappeared at all!!!!
I couldn't connect again in any way. Not even by closing and restarting KNetworkManager, nor by unplugging the wifi card and plugging it again.

Please help! I'm desperate, I would like to become a linux user, but I can't find a single linux distro that can be up and running out-of-the box on my computer and get me connected to the internet. It seems to me such a basic requirement for a desktop operating system: to get all your hardware working, to be able to see the contents of your storage media just by plugging them, and to get connected to the internet!
Almost all recent linux distros claim they do all this out of the box, I'm starting to think I miss the real meaning of the expression "out of the box".

Thanks in advance
matteo

Re: connection unstable

Posted: Sat Nov 24, 2007 0:48

by onlyoneskwalla

Have you tried an alternate wifi manager? Like wpa_supplicant, or net-setup? Have you tried upgrading madwifi(your atheros chip driver) or Networkmanager? I'm on 3.4f and shows it could use a update. Wpa_supplicant has a gui and net-setup is a simple cli network utility.

You can test the net-setup really easily by and that will at least tell you whether its the driver or the NM daemon

Re: connection unstable

onlyoneskwalla wrote:Have you tried an alternate wifi manager? Like wpa_supplicant,

Isn't wpa_supplicant only for WPA-encrypted networks? Mine is WEP encrypted

Re: connection unstable

Posted: Sat Nov 24, 2007 20:01

by matteosistisette

onlyoneskwalla wrote:Have you tried upgrading madwifi(your atheros chip driver) or Networkmanager? I'm on 3.4f and shows it could use a update.

I'm trying the live CD. I haven't installed to harddisk yet. I guess I have to install before I can update; however I need to connect to the internet before I can update, and if I can't get the wifi working I can't connect to the internet, at least from home.

onlyoneskwalla wrote:
You can test the net-setup really easily by and that will at least tell you whether its the driver or the NM daemon

I can't run net-setup, it says "no such file or command" or something like that.
I'm using the MINI edition live CD, because I tried the 3.4f DVD, but it just won't boot!!!!

Re: connection unstable

Posted: Sat Nov 24, 2007 22:21

by onlyoneskwalla

Wpa_supplicant can handle wep/wpa/wpa2 so no problem there, strange that net-setup isn't on the mini. Well let me try and figure out the package its apart of.

Re: connection unstable

Posted: Sat Nov 24, 2007 22:24

by matteosistisette

Ok it's definitely not the NetworkManager.

I could finally boot the 3.4f DVD (just burnt another copy and it boots fine).

I stopped the Network Manager.
Then I tried with net-setup, I entered all the information when prompted, but at the end just nothing happened.
When I tried a ping 192.168.1.1 I got an immediate "network unreachable".

Then I asked myself: What the fuck is "wifi0"????????????
I have only one wifi card which is ath0.

So I did an iwconfig.
I forgot to save the output but it was more or less:
lo - no wireless extensions
eth0 - no wireless extensions
wifi0 - no wireless extensions
ath0 - a lot of stuff here.

I also did ifconfig; again I forgot to save the output, but the MAC address of wifi0 was:
00-15-E9-84-19-B6-00-00-00-00-00-00 (the number of zeroes may be incorrect)
which is the same mac address of my card plus a few zeroes.
Note that the MAC address of ath0 was shown as:
00:15:E9:84:19:B6

Yes, that of wifi0 appeared with "-" as the separator, while that of ath0 appeared with ":".

Weird, isn't it?

So what would be the next step?

Thanks,
m.

Re: connection unstable

Posted: Sat Nov 24, 2007 22:58

by onlyoneskwalla

lsmod contain any mac80211? or ath5k? Anyways sounds like a bug with the 2 drivers stacks competing for the same card. You can try installing the new madwifi-ng or removing the mac80211 stack from the kernel or upgrading the kernel to see if the problems been addressed.

If mac80211 is there or ath5k you can modprobe -r them to see if that helps any.

Re: connection unstable

Posted: Sun Nov 25, 2007 13:07

by matteosistisette

onlyoneskwalla wrote:lsmod contain any mac80211? or ath5k? Anyways sounds like a bug with the 2 drivers stacks competing for the same card.